(This story was originally published on June 30 at 10:42am.)

Oregon Media Central confirms that the price of a single issue of The Oregonian will increase from 75 cents to $1 on July 1.

UPDATE (6/30, 11;46am): Huh. Was this a "first on OMC?" Looks like it.

UPDATE (6/30, 1:35pm): It was indeed a "first on OMC." Now promoting it like any good TV station would.

UPDATE (6/30, 3:13pm): From the comments, Bob Barker explains:

I stumbled onto the rate increase due to an issue I had with one of their yellow paper boxes this morning. I called in to the customer no service line and complained about the box eating my change. (This was not a singular incident either)... The customer no service rep asked if I deposited a dollar, I said... "No... the paper costs 75 cents. " The customer no service rep stated it is now a dollar, but quickly retracted the statement as this was not to be announced until 7/1/09

He also inquires as to whether he'll get 25 cents more coverage, or just more wire copy.

UPDATE (6/30, 6:13pm): Welcome, Blogtown readers! You may be interested in a story about Matt Davis we're publishing later tonight....

UPDATE (7/1, 1:51am): Whenever we say "confirmed," we mean it is confirmed. "Confirmed" does not mean we just heard it from a guy. In this instance, we confirmed it by speaking directly with people at The Oregonian who would know these things. Thank you for your time.

UPDATE (7/1, 8:34am): The first reactions come in on Twitter this morning. From LTLV613: "$1 for the paper???? Is this the Portland/New York (Times) love affair creeping up again?" And from BJDorr: "$1 for DAILY? No wonder why newspapers are losing subscribers."

OMC is informed that the last rate increase, from 50 cents to 75, was exactly nine months ago on October 1, 2008.

UPDATE (7/1, 9:11am): Some quotes from a Bloomberg article in May:

"Those rate hikes will continue as long as they can keep pushing them through," Alexia Quadrani, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst in New York, said in an interview. "Circulation is relatively a positive story, but unfortunately it doesn’t do too much to offset the declining advertising."

..."Circulation revenues are up, primarily because of higher newsstand and home delivery prices," Scott Heekin-Canedy, Times Co.'s president and general manager, said in an e-mail.

Going way back, an AJR story from 1999:

As recently as the 1980s, newspapers could raise prices and expect to take only a mild hit in circulation, say 4 to 5 percent, which they would regain within six to eight months. In the late 1990s, though, raising prices might bring a hit of 10 percent or more, and it might take years to regain lost ground, if ever.

And here's a self congratulatory NY Post article from 2006 after cutting its price in half and reducing home delivery to special rates of as little as $2 for eight weeks, which increased its circulation above the competing Daily News. The catch? The Post doesn't make a profit. It has multi-million dollar financing from its owner, Rupert Murdoch.

We'll have recent circulation figures for The Oregonian in our next update.

UPDATE (7/30, 9:52am): Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers for The Oregonian over time:

6mo. ending 3/31/05: Daily: 332,829, Sun: 398,694
6mo. ending 9/31/05: Daily: 333,515, Sun: 394,992
6mo. ending 3/31/06: Daily: 323,017, Sun: 384,729
6mo. ending 9/31/06: Daily: 318,286, Sun: 380,939
6mo. ending 3/31/07: Daily: 319,625, Sun: 375,913
6mo. ending 9/31/07: Daily: 309,467, Sun: 371,386
6mo. ending 3/31/08: Daily: 304,399, Sun: 361,988
6mo. ending 9/31/08: Daily: 283,321, Sun: 344,950
6mo. ending 3/31/09: Daily: 268,512, Sun: 325,816

UPDATE (7/1, 11:43am): Daily newsstand prices by circulation:

21. The Star-Ledger (New Jersey, Advance, 287,082): $0.75
22. St. Petersburg Times (Florida, Times Co., 283,093): $0.50
23. The Oregonian (Oregon, Advance, 268,512): $1.00
24. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia, Cox, 261,828): $0.75
25. The San Diego Union-Tribune (California, Copley, 261,253): $0.75

UPDATE (7/1, 12:35pm): Author J. Steven York on the Oregon Coast says the daily rate is now $1.25 where he is. Outer-lying areas generally do pay a higher rate than Portland does.

UPDATE (7/1, 3:48pm): York chimes in with a great comment:

Considering that it seems about 80% of the national coverage is stuff I read on the New York Times web-site the day before, buying the print paper seems increasingly counter-productive. ...

I'd miss the local coverage, of course, but the Oregonian has pulled back so far from being a regional paper to being a city one, that much of that isn't much relevant to me either. ...

I can't help but feel that I'm seeing print newspapers die, and this is very sad to me.

Read the whole comment, including a discussion of the Kindle.

And sorry we didn't update for about three hours, an odd issue popped up. It's fixed.